A New Precise Measurement of the $e^+e^-\to\pi^+\pi^-(\gamma)$ Cross Section with the Initial-State Radiation Method at BaBar
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arXiv: 2611.04596v1 · Summary page
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Revisiting a key ingredient of the muon’s magnetism
A new BaBar analysis measures how often electron–positron collisions produce charged pion pairs, a process needed to calculate the influence of hadronic vacuum polarization on the muon’s magnetic anomaly. Rather than determining the collision rate in isolation, the team uses the ratio of pion-pair to muon-pair production, reducing uncertainties shared by the measurements. Unlike the earlier BaBar analysis, it separates pion and muon contributions statistically through their angular distributions.
The preprint compares the new result with the earlier BaBar measurement while accounting for their correlated uncertainties, and also compares it with other pion-pair measurements. This matters beyond the details of collider analysis: interpreting precision tests of the muon requires a reliable accounting of ordinary strong-interaction effects before any residual can be attributed to unfamiliar physics.
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